Kiley's £365,000 bonus

London transport commissioner Bob Kiley is in line for a bumper £365,000 bonus this year.

This means he will have picked up almost £1 million in bonuses in the last three years - on top of a £425,000 annual salary and housing package.

But Tube renewal work is years behind schedule, while official figures show delays across the network are worse than a year ago.

Concerns about growing traffic congestion have prompted Mayor Ken Livingstone to plan to double the size of the congestion charge zone.

Now questions are being asked about the size of Mr

Kiley's pay packet - and whether previous bonuses were justified.

The Liberal Democrats, who used the Freedom of

Information Act to force Transport for London to reveal how Mr

Kiley's bonuses are calculated, claimed he was being paid vast sums "simply for doing his job".

TfL admitted it used four measures to assess the size of his bonus:

TfL points to increased bus, Tube and DLR journeys, apparent increases in passenger satisfaction and a 30 per cent cut in delays within the congestion charge zone.

But the targets exclude factors such as Tube derailments or signal failures, or fare dodging on bendy buses. The documents also show that the Mayor agreed to pay Mr Kiley 96 per cent of his bonus in both 2002 and 2003, working out at £275,000 a year.

A three-man committee - Mr Livingstone, curry magnate Sir Gulam Noon and Post Office chairman Sir Mike Hodgkinson, all of whom sit on

the TfL board - will decide in May whether to award Mr Kiley his 2004 bonus, which is worth up to £365,000.

Lynne Featherstone, Lib-Dem chairwoman of the London Assembly's transport committee, said: "These 'bonus targets' appear to be vague, selective and fundamentally flawed.

"These targets blatantly ignore many of the areas where London's travelling public has seen services get worse. Mr Kiley has been given the opportunity to massively increase his take-home pay but many Londoners will ask what he has achieved to justify this."

The documents, which took the Liberal Democrats two months to obtain, state that Mr Kiley, 69, has made a "significant contribution" since his appointment in January 2001.

But separate TfL's statistics paint a less rosy picture. Its website reveals the "excess time" Tube passengers are delayed by has grown since 2003.

Its most recent board papers say Underground passenger numbers remain lower than five years ago, while soaring fares have cut income as customers shun peak-hour travel for cheaper off-peak tickets.

They also reveal that passengers on the Bakerloo, Central and Victoria lines have experienced almost four million hours of delays since last April - 200,000 hours above target.

TfL has been forced to fine congestion charge operator Capita ?3.7 million after it failed to hit targets.

Mr Kiley has since renegotiated a new four-year deal worth ?2.4 million, excluding the cost of his Belgravia townhouse - with annual bonuses pegged back to £285,000. He took home a total of £700,000 in 2003/4.

TfL only released his bonus scheme after Mr Kiley was forced to admit on live television that the travelling public had a right to know the details.

It now plans to publish full information online, beyond the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act. Fiona Smith, TfL's head lawyer, said in a letter to the Lib-Dems: "The Commissioner is keen that TfL is as open and accountable as it can be in relation to the services it provides to the travelling public."